


This is going to be fun

by Meatball42



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Pre-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sakaar (Marvel), Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-08 11:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13457067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: On a flyover of quadrant 86, Brunnhilde sees the target: a large green being, wearing only ragged trousers, with strength out of proportion even to his large size. He throws a piece of junk larger than his own body hard enough to obliterate a low-flying craft that’s firing upon him. Even inside Warsong she can hear the rage in his scream.





	This is going to be fun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monicawoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/gifts).



By the time Brunnhilde sobers up enough to pick up her onboard communicator, the beast has already taken out fifteen or so other scrappers. She grins when she reads the message. It’s been quiet lately. Not enough distraction.

On a flyover of quadrant 86, Brunnhilde sees the target: a large green creature, wearing only ragged trousers, with strength out of proportion even to his large size. He throws a piece of junk larger than his own body hard enough to obliterate a low-flying craft that’s firing upon him. Even inside Warsong she can hear the rage in his scream.

This is going to be fun.

Brunnhilde sends a soundburst on the local airwaves and the lesser scrappers clear out. She lands a fair distance away from the berserker so Warsong won’t get trashed when she takes him down, and hikes over the piles of trash to reach him.

Left to his own devices, the behemoth is tearing apart some junk. Metal screeches in the air as it’s ripped into pieces. Brunnhilde considers her options before taking out her sword and making sure her charge pods are close at hand. Fists probably aren’t going to cut it with this one.

“You there!” she calls, descending a mountain of junk toward him.

The beast looks up, growls. He squeezes whatever he’s holding until it’s crushed, then throws it aside. He takes two steps toward her, and the unstable piles beneath him shiver.

“Here’s how it works,” Brunnhilde shouts. “You can come in voluntarily, take your chances in the arena, win fame and fortune. Or, I can take you in, you’ll still take your chances in the arena, but they won’t pay you at all. What do you think?”

The beast’s scowl deepens until he is shaking his head in rage as she speaks. He leaps, half the distance between them, smashes the mountain with his fist and roars. Even with the length of several vessels in between them, the force of his breath tosses her hair back.

Whatever the creature is, it doesn’t seem intelligent enough to communicate. That’s just fine. She’s up for it.

“Enough of that, then,” she says, and takes two steps into a leap.

The beast meets her head on, jumping to meet her and swinging a fist that could have broken something if she hadn’t swiveled mid-air. Her sword makes contact with his side, but doesn’t pierce the skin. She lands and immediately jumps back up, ensuring the creature doesn’t get the high ground.

Maybe he couldn’t communicate, but he was smart, Brunnhilde came to realize as they crushed, tore, and set fire to a sector’s worth of flotsam. He knew how to use cover, elevation, and nearby junk to his advantage and he didn’t fall for most of her feints. Her sword could cut him, but it was difficult, and even a glancing blow from one of his fists was enough to bruise Brunnhilde and throw her off course. If she could bring him in, there was no doubt he’d do well in the ring.

At a certain point, though, she stops caring about how many units she’d get for him and starts enjoying the fight. Since she’d had her own turn in the arena a few millennia ago, there hadn’t been much in the way of good fights. She started a riot every so often when things got really dull, but there weren’t many who could match someone like her. It’s good to stretch her muscles again, and she finds herself smiling for real, even laughing when she or the beast got a good hit in.

Her enthusiasm is contagious. Some of the creature’s grunts start to sound like laughter, and he shows his teeth in what would be a terrifying predatory display if Brunnhilde were the sort to be frightened by that. He doesn’t pull any punches, but neither does she, and when she comes to a stop on a plateau he stops too.

“I haven’t had this much fun in a few centuries,” she tells him. “So thanks for that.”

He only grunts, but he looks happy. His huge chest expands visibly as he pants. Brunnhilde puts her hands on her knees herself. “Call it a draw?”

“Hulk win,” the beast says.

Brunnhilde stands up in surprise. He can talk! “Hulk,” she repeats. “Is that your name, your species? Your team name?”

“No team,” the beast growls. “Just Hulk.”

There’s something in his voice- a loneliness, or a yearning. It isn’t enough to overcome the anger in his furrowed brow, and that’s something Brunnhilde can relate to, more than she wants to.

“Alright Hulk. You can call me 142.”

A huge huff, and another scowl. “No number! Number for subjects. People get names.” He punches the ground, twice, three times, more and more viciously. 

Victim of experimentation, then. Not uncommon. “Okay, okay!” she shouts over the sound of compressing metal. Wouldn’t do to have him lose his cool now. “I’ll tell you, but it’s just between us, alright? Can you keep a secret?”

He squints, but nods. “Hulk won’t tell.”

Brunnhilde nods. It’s harder than she thought it would be to say her name, for the first time in a few hundred years. “I’m Brunnhilde. But you have to call me Scrapper 142 when someone might hear you. It gets annoying if people remember me.”

“No one to tell,” Hulk says. He digs his foot into the ground, looking lost.

“You didn’t come here on purpose, then,” she says, not really a question. He shakes his head no anyway.

“Couldn’t stay. Fly away. Then, light.” He gestures with his massive arms, something that looks like an interdimensional portal. Grandmaster must have had his eye on Hulk, then, snapped him up when he saw the opportunity.

“Look,” she says, sighing. “There’s not really a way out of this. You won’t be able to leave Sakaar unless you do your time in the arena.”

“Don’t tell Hulk what to do!” Hulk roars.

“I’m just telling you how it works here,” Brunnhilde shouts back, nonplussed. “You like fighting anyway, right? You’re like me.”

Hulk snorts. “Hulk smash.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty good at it. Look. Come with me. If you go to Grandmaster voluntarily, you get your own room, you get to go out in the markets, you get fed well. And you, as good a fighter as you are- it won’t take long for you to rise in the rankings. Think about it. You win enough fights, you can buy whatever you like, eat and drink like a king. You can get whatever company you want. You’ll have thousands, tens of thousands, of fans who’ll cheer you on.”

That gets a reaction, a light in his eyes. Brunnhilde pushes the point. “People love the fighters on Sakaar. I bet you’d be a favorite. You’d be their hero.”

“Hero,” Hulk rumbles. He blinks, the frustration nearly gone from his face for a few moments. “No one try to lock Hulk up?”

Brunnhilde thinks for a moment, trying to decide what she can negotiate with Grandmaster, but… damn it, this is the most interesting thing that’s happened in the last hundred years. She’ll pay the insurance out of pocket if her finder’s fee won’t cover it.

“I’ll vouch for you. You fight in the arena, you keep winning, no one will think about locking you up.”

Hulk grins again, those huge teeth glinting. “Hulk wins.”

Brunnhilde matches his smile tooth for tooth. “I bet you will.”


End file.
